Answer for exercise 3
The solution for exercise 3 in chapter 7 - Vital statistics of Outcomes Advanced - Student's Book by Carol Nuttall and Amanda French
Question
Work in pairs. Use some of the language in bold in Exercise 2 to discuss why it might be important to ask these questions about research.
Answer
- The commissioning person may have a vested interest in a result. The company might twist the figures to suit its own ends.
- If the data isn’t collected at random, the results might not stand up to scrutiny. You get more chance of exaggerated results if the people are self-selected. Self-selection might confirm popular beliefs held by the group.
- Usually the bigger the sample, the more accurate the results because anomalies become less important.
- You get experts to check figures to see if they stand up to scrutiny. They spot flaws in the research. They may be less likely to have vested interests, or to have to declare them.
- There may be some variables that weren’t covered. Perhaps the results were caused by those variables rather than the ones which were included in the study. Without full context one may draw the wrong conclusions or twist them to suit. They may hide conflicting evidence.
- People may just make the wrong connections – correlations don’t necessarily prove cause. Researcher may have ignored conflicting evidence. May not be able to explain the conclusions – there is no overall theory.